Amid rising prices, Finance minister shops for vegetables

Chennai: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday shopped for vegetables in Tamil Nadu's Mylapore locality before she left for New Delhi.

A video of the minister showed her picking up sweet potatoes and bitter gourd at a street vendor's, filling up a shopping vessel.

The items on her list, according to The Hindu, included Sundakkai (turkey berry), pidi karanai (wild yam) and five bunches of mulai keerai (a kind of amaranth) and manathakkali keerai

BJP MLA Vanathi Srinivasan, who accompanied the minister, said the vendors were initially taken aback seeing the gun-toting security personnel.

The women vendors soon overcame fear and interacted with her, even inviting her for cup of coffee.

The minster spent 20 minutes there as she had to catch a flight to Delhi, she said.

Vanathi Srinivasan reportedly said that Sitharaman knew the place as she had spent summers in Mylapore when she was young.

The union minister posed for selfies and interacted with residents.

She was on her way to Srinivasan's home when she stopped at the market for shopping.

Vegetables are among Sitharaman's focus as inflation pushes prices of them in the nation.

India's retail inflation jumped to 7 per cent in August from 6.71 per cent in the previous month following rise in food prices, according to reports.

India's chief economist Kaushik Das also said the same in a note on September 20.